Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 328, February, 1843

The THIRTEENTH DISCOURSE shows that art is not imitation, but is under the influence and direction of the imagination, and in what manner poetry, painting, acting, gardening, and architecture, depart from nature. However good it is to study the beauties of artists, this is only to know art through them. The principles of painting remain to be compared with those of other arts, all of them with human nature. All arts address themselves only to two faculties of the mind, its imagination and its sensibility. We have feeling, and an instantaneous judgment, the result of the experience of life, and reasonings which we cannot trace. It is safer to trust to this feeling and judgment, than endeavour to control and direct art upon a supposition of what ought in reason to be the end or means. We should, therefore, most carefully store first impressions. They are true, though we know not the process by which the first conviction is formed. Partial and after reasoning often serves to destroy that character, the truth of which came upon us as with an instinctive knowledge. We often reason ourselves into narrow and partial theories, not aware that "real principles of sound reason, and of so much more weight and importance, are involved, and as it were lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment. Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine every thing; at this minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to give way to feeling." Sir Joshua again refers to the mistaken views of art, and taken too by not the poorest minds, "that it entirely or mainly depends on imitation." Plato, even in this respect, misleads by a partial theory. It is with "such a false view that Cardinal Bembo has chosen to distinguish even Raffaelle himself, whom our enthusiasm honours with the name divine. The same sentiment is adopted by Pope in his epitaph on Sir Godfrey Kneller; and he turns the panegyric solely on imitation as it is a sort of deception." It is, undoubtedly, most important that the world should be taught to honour art for its highest qualities; until this is done, the profession will be a degradation. So far from painting being imitation, he proceeds to show that "it is, and ought to be, in many points of view, and strictly speaking, no imitation at all of external nature." Civilization is not the gross state of nature; imagination is the result of cultivation, of civilization; it is to this state of nature art must be more closely allied. We must not appeal for judgment upon art to those who have not acquired the faculty to admire. The lowest style of all arts please the uncultivated. But, to speak of the unnaturalness of art—let it be illustrated by poetry, which speaks in language highly artificial, and "a construction of measured words, such as never is nor ever was used by man." Now, as there is in the human mind "a sense of congruity, coherence, and consistency," which must be gratified; so, having once assumed a language and style not adopted in common discourse, "it is required that the sentiments also should be in the same proportion raised above common nature." There must be an agreement of all the parts with the whole. He recognizes the chorus of the ancient drama, and the recitative of the Italian opera as natural, under this view. "And though the most violent passions, the highest distress, even death itself, are expressed in singing or recitative, I would not admit as sound criticism the condemnation of such exhibitions on account of their being unnatural." "Shall reason stand in the way, and tell us that we ought not to like what we know we do like, and prevent us from feeling the full effect of this complicated exertion of art? It appears to us that imagination is that gift to man, to be attained by cultivation, that enables him to rise above and out of his apparent nature; it is the source of every thing good and great, we had almost said of every virtue. The parent of all arts, it is of a higher devotion; it builds and adorns temples more worthy of the great Maker of all, and praises Him in sounds too noble for the common intercourse and business of life, which demand of the most cultivated that they put themselves upon a lower level than they are capable of assuming. So far, therefore, is a servile imitation from being necessary, that whatever is familiar, or in any way reminds us of what we see and hear every day, perhaps does not belong to the higher provinces of art, either in poetry or painting. The mind is to be transported, as Shakspeare expresses it, beyond the ignorant present, to ages past. Another and a higher order of beings is supposed, and to those beings every thing which is introduced into the work must correspond." He speaks of a picture by Jan Steen, the "Sacrifice of Iphigenia," wherein the common nature, with the silks and velvets, would make one think the painter had intended to burlesque his subject. "Ill taught reason" would lead us to prefer a portrait by Denner to one by Titian or Vandyke. There is an eloquent passage, showing that landscape painting should in like manner appeal to the imagination; we are only surprised that the author of this description should have omitted, throughout these Discourses, the greatest of all landscape painters, whose excellence he should seem to refer to by his language. "Like the poet, he makes the elements sympathize with his subject, whether the clouds roll in volumes, like those of Titian or Salvator Rosa—or, like those of Claude, are gilded with the setting sun; whether the mountains have hidden and bold projections, or are gently sloped; whether the branches of his trees shoot out abruptly in right angles from their trunks, or follow each other with only a gentle inclination. All these circumstances contribute to the general character of the work, whether it be of the elegant or of the more sublime kind. If we add to this the powerful materials of lightness and darkness, over which the artist has complete dominion, to vary and dispose them as he pleases—to diminish or increase them, as will best suit his purpose, and correspond to the general idea of his work; a landscape, thus conducted, under the influence of a poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the more ordinary and common views, as Milton's "Allegro" and "Penseroso" have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a picture would make a more forcible impression on the mind than the real scenes, were they presented before us." We have quoted the above passage, because it is wanted—we are making great mistakes in that delightful, and (may we not say?) that high branch of art. He pursues the same argument with regard to acting, and condemns the ignorant praise bestowed by Fielding on Garrick. Not an idea of deception enters the mind of actor or author. On the stage, even the expression of strong passion must be without the natural distortion and screaming voice. Transfer, he observes, acting to a private room, and it would be ridiculous. "Quid enim deformius, quum scenam in vitam transferre?" Yet he gives here a caution, "that no art can be grafted with success on another art." "If a painter should endeavour to copy the theatrical pomp and parade of dress and attitude, instead of that simplicity which is not a greater beauty in life than it is in painting, we should condemn such pictures, as painted in the meanest style." What will our academician, Mr Maclise, say of this remark? He then adduces gardening in support of his theory,—"nature to advantage dressed," "beautiful and commodious for the recreation of man." We cannot, however, go with Sir Joshua, who adds, that "so dressed, it is no longer a subject for the pencil of a landscape painter, as all landscape painters know." It is certainly unlike the great landscape he has described, but not very unlike Claude's, nor out of the way of his pencil. We have in our mind's eye a garden scene by Vander Heyden, most delightful, most elegant. It is some royal garden, with its proper architecture, the arch, the steps, and balustrades, and marble walks. The queen of the artificial paradise is entering, and in the shade with her attendants, but she will soon place her foot upon the prepared sunshine. Courtiers are here and there walking about, or leaning over the balustrades. All is elegance—a scene prepared for the recreation of pure and cultivated beings. We cannot say the picture is not landscape. We are sure it gave us ten times more pleasure than ever we felt from any of our landscape views, with which modern landscape painting has covered the walls of our exhibitions, and brought into disrepute our "annuals." He proceeds to architecture, and praises Vanburgh for his poetical imagination; though he, with Perrault, was a mark for the wits of the day.11 Sir Joshua points to the façade of the Louvre, Blenheim, and Castle Howard, as "the fairest ornaments." He finishes this admirable discourse with the following eloquent passage:—"It is allowed on all hands, that facts and events, however they may bind the historian, have no dominion over the poet or the painter. With us history is made to bend and conform to this great idea of art. And why? Because these arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses; but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us. Just so much as our art has of this, just so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it exhibits; and those of our artists who possessed this mark of distinction in the highest degree, acquired from thence the glorious appellation of divine.

Mr Burnet's notes to this Discourse are not important to art. There is an amusing one on acting, that discusses the question of naturalness on the stage, and with some pleasant anecdotes.

The FOURTEENTH DISCOURSE is chiefly occupied with the character of Gainsborough, and landscape painting. It has brought about him, and his name, a hornet's nest of critics, in consequence of some remarks upon a picture of Wilson's. Gainsborough and Sir Joshua, and perhaps in some degree Wilson, had been rivals. It has been said that Wilson and Gainsborough never liked each other. It is a well-known anecdote that Sir Joshua, at a dinner, gave the health of Gainsborough, adding "the greatest landscape painter of the age," to which Wilson, at whom the words were supposed to be aimed, dryly added, "and the greatest portrait painter too." We can, especially under circumstances, for there had been a coolness between the President and Gainsborough, pardon the too favourable view taken of Gainsborough's landscape pictures. He was unquestionably much greater as a portrait painter. The following account of the interview with Gainsborough upon his death-bed, is touching, and speaks well of both:—"A few days before he died he wrote me a letter, to express his acknowledgments for the good opinion I entertained of his abilities, and the manner in which (he had been informed) I always spoke of him; and desired that he might see me once before he died. I am aware how flattering it is to myself to be thus connected with the dying testimony which this excellent painter bore to his art. But I cannot prevail upon myself to suppress that I was not connected with him by any habits of familiarity. If any little jealousies had subsisted between us, they were forgotten in these moments of sincerity; and he turned towards me as one who was engrossed by the same pursuits, and who deserved his good opinion by being sensible of his excellence. Without entering into a detail of what passed at this last interview, the impression of it upon my mind was, that his regret at losing life was principally the regret of leaving his art; and more especially as he now began, he said, to see what his deficiencies were; which, he said, he flattered himself in his last works were in some measure supplied." When the Discourse was delivered, Raffaelle Mengs and Pompeo Batoni were great names. Sir Joshua foretells their fall from that high estimation. Andrea Sacchi, and "perhaps" Carlo Maratti, he considers the "ultimi Romanorum." He prefers "the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in the great historical style." He gives some account of the "customs and habits of this extraordinary man." Gainsborough's love for his art was remarkable. He was ever remarking to those about him any peculiarity of countenance, accidental combination of figures, effects of light and shade, in skies, in streets, and in company. If he met a character he liked, he would send him home to his house. He brought into his painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, &c. He even formed models of landscapes on his table, composed of broken stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which, magnified, became rocks, trees, and water. Most of this is the common routine of every artist's life; the modelling his landscapes in the manner mentioned, Sir Joshua himself seems to speak doubtingly about. It in fact shows, that in Gainsborough there was a poverty of invention; his scenes are of the commonest kind, such as few would stop to admire in nature; and, when we consider the wonderful variety that nature did present to him, it is strange that his sketches and compositions should have been so devoid of beauty. He was in the habit of painting by night, a practice which Reynolds recommends, and thought it must have been the practice of Titian and Coreggio. He might have mentioned the portrait of Michael Angelo with the candle in his cap and a mallet in his hand. Gainsborough was ambitious of attaining excellence, regardless of riches. The style chosen by Gainsborough did not require that he should go out of his own country. No argument is to be drawn from thence, that travelling is not desirable for those who choose other walks of art—knowing that "the language of the art must be learned somewhere," he applied himself to the Flemish school, and certainly with advantage, and occasionally made copies from Rubens, Teniers, and Vandyke. Granting him as a painter great merit, Sir Joshua doubts whether he excelled most in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures. Few now will doubt upon the subject—next to Sir Joshua, he was the greatest portrait painter we have had, so as to be justly entitled to the fame of being one of the founders of the English School. He did not attempt historical painting; and here Sir Joshua contrasts him with Hogarth; who did so injudiciously. It is strange that Sir Joshua should have characterised Hogarth as having given his attention to "the Ridicule of Life." We could never see any thing ridiculous in his deep tragedies. Gainsborough is praised in that he never introduced "mythological learning" into his pictures. "Our late ingenious academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been guilty, like many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and goddesses, ideal beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to receive such personages. His landscapes were in reality too near common nature to admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many figures are introduced in the foreground, some in apparent distress, and some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by lightning: had not the painter injudiciously, (as I think,) rather chosen that their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the children of Niobe." This is the passage that gave so much offence; foolish admirers will fly into flame at the slightest spark—the question should have been, is the criticism just, not whether Sir Joshua had been guilty of the same error—but we like critics, the only true critics, who give their reason: and so did Sir Joshua. "To manage a subject of this kind a peculiar style of art is required; and it can only be done without impropriety, or even without ridicule, when we adopt the character of the landscape, and that too in all its parts, to the historical or poetical representation. This is a very difficult adventure, and requires a mind thrown back two thousand years, like that of Nicolo Poussin, to achieve it. In the picture alluded to, the first idea that presents itself is that of wonder, at seeing a figure in so uncommon a situation as that in which Apollo is placed: for the clouds on which he kneels have not the appearance of being able to support him—they have neither the substance nor the form fit for the receptacle of a human figure, and they do not possess, in any respect, that romantic character which is appropriated to such an object, and which alone can harmonize with poetical stories." We presume Reynolds alludes to the best of the two Niobes by Wilson—that in the National Gallery. The other is villanously faulty as a composition, where loaf is piled upon loaf for rock and castle, and the tree is common and hedge-grown, for the purpose of making gates; but the other would have been a fine picture, not of the historical class—the parts are all common, the little blown about underwood is totally deficient in all form and character—rocks and trees, and they do not, as in a former discourse—Reynolds had laid down that they should—sympathize with the subject; then, as to the substance of the cloud, he is right—it is not voluminous, it is mere vapour. In the received adoption of clouds as supporting figures, they are, at least, pillowy, capacious, and round—here it is quite otherwise; and Sir Joshua might well call it a little Apollo, with that immense cloud above him, which is in fact too much a portrait of a cloud, too peculiar, too edgy, for any subject where the sky is not to be all in all. We do not say it is not fine and grand, and what you please; but it is not subordinate, it casts its lightning as from its own natural power, there was no need of a god's assistance.

"Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus;"

and the action does not take place in a "prepared" landscape. There is nothing to take us back to a fabled age. Reynolds is not unjust to Wilson's merits, for he calls it, notwithstanding this defect, "a very admirable picture;" which picture will, we suspect, in a few years lose its principal charm, if it has not lost it; the colour is sadly changing, there is now little aerial in the sky. It is said of Wilson, that he ridiculed the experiments of Sir Joshua, and spoke of using nothing but "honest linseed"—to which, however, he added varnishes and wax, as will easily be seen in those pictures of his which have so cracked—and now lose their colour. "Honest" linseed appears to have played him a sad trick, or he to have played a trick upon honest linseed. Sir Joshua, however, to his just criticism, adds the best precept, example—and instances two pictures, historical landscape, "Jacob's Dream"—which was exhibited a year or two ago in the Institution, Pall-Mall—by Salvator Rosa, and the picture by Sebastian Bourdon, "The Return of the Ark from Captivity," now in the National Gallery. The latter picture, as a composition, is not perhaps good—it is cut up into too many parts, and those parts are not sufficiently poetical; in its hue, it may be appropriate. The other, "Jacob's Dream" is one of the finest by the master—there is an extraordinary boldness in the clouds, an uncommon grandeur, strongly marked, sentient of angelic visitants. This picture has been recently wretchedly engraved in mezzotinto; all that is in the picture firm and hard, is in the print soft, fuzzy, and disagreeable. Sir Joshua treats very tenderly the mistaken manner of Gainsborough in his late pictures, the "odd scratches and marks." "This chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic at a certain distance, assumes form, and all their parts seem to drop into their places, so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence, under the appearance of chance and heavy negligence." The heavy negligence happily describes the fault of the manner. It is horribly manifest in that magnitude of vulgarity for landscape, the "Market Cart" in our National Gallery, and purchased at we know not what vast sum, and presented by the governors of the institution to the nation. We have a very high opinion of the genius of Gainsborough; but we do not see it in his landscapes, with very few exceptions. His portraits have an air of truth never exceeded, and that set off with great power and artistical skill; and his rustic children are admirable. He stands alone, and never has had a successful imitator. The mock sentimentality, the affected refinement, which has been added to his simple style by other artists, is disgusting in the extreme. Gainsborough certainly studied colour with great success. He is both praised and blamed for a lightness of manner and effect possessed "to an unexampled degree of excellence;" but "the sacrifice which he made, to this ornament of our art, was too great." We confess we do not understand Sir Joshua, nor can we reconcile "the heavy negligence" with this "lightness of manner." Mr Burnet, in one of his notes, compares Wilson with Gainsborough; he appears to give the preference to Wilson—why does he not compare Gainsborough with Sir Joshua himself? the rivalry should have been in portrait. There is a long note upon Sir Joshua's remarks upon Wilson's "Niobe." We are not surprised at Cunningham's "Castigation." He did not like Sir Joshua, and could not understand nor value his character. This is evident in his Life of the President. Cunningham must have had but an ill-educated classic eye when he asserted so grandiloquently,—"He rose at once from the tame insipidity of common scenery into natural grandeur and magnificence; his streams seem all abodes for nymphs, his hills are fit haunts for the muses, and his temples worthy of gods,"—a passage, we think, most worthy the monosyllable commonly used upon such occasions by the manly and simple-minded Mr Burchell. That Sir Joshua occasionally transgressed in his wanderings into mythology, it would be difficult to deny; nor was it his only transgression from his legitimate ground, as may be seen in his "Holy Family" in the National Gallery. But we doubt if the critique upon his "Mrs Siddons" is quite fair. The chair and the footstool may not be on the cloud, a tragic and mysterious vapour reconciling the bodily presence of the muse with the demon and fatal ministers of the drama that attend her. Though Sir Joshua's words are here brought against him, it is without attention to their application in his critique, which condemned their form and character as not historical nor voluminous—faults that do not attach to the clouds, if clouds they must be in the picture (the finest of Sir Joshua's works) of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse. It is not our business to enter upon the supposed fact, that Sir Joshua was jealous of Wilson; the one was a polished, the other perhaps a somewhat coarse man. We have only to see if the criticism be just. In this Discourse Sir Joshua has the candour to admit, that there were at one time jealousies between him and Gainsborough; there may have been between him and Wilson, but, at all events, we cannot take a just criticism as a proof of it, or we must convict him, and all others too, of being jealous of artists and writers whose works they in any manner censure.

The FIFTEENTH DISCOURSE.—We come now to Sir Joshua's last Discourse, in which the President takes leave of the Academy, reviews his "Discourses," and concludes with recommending the study of Michael Angelo.

Having gone along with the President of the Academy in the pursuit of the principles of the art in these Discourses, and felt a portion of the enthusiasm which he felt, and knew so well how to impart to others, we come to this last Discourse, with a melancholy knowledge that it was the last; and reflect with pain upon that cloud which so soon interposed between Reynolds and at least the practical enjoyment of his art. He takes leave of the Academy affectionately, and, like a truth-loving man to the last, acknowledges the little contentions (in so softening a manner does he speak of the "rough hostility of Barry," and "oppositions of Gainsborough") which "ought certainly," says he, "to be lost among ourselves in mutual esteem for talents and acquirements: every controversy ought to be—I am persuaded will be—sunk in our zeal for the perfection of our common art." "My age, and my infirmities still more than my age, make it probable that this will be the last time I shall have the honour of addressing you from this place." This last visit seemed to be threatened with a tragical end;—the circumstance showed the calm mind of the President; it was characteristic of the man who would die with dignity, and gracefully. A large assembly were present, of rank and importance, besides the students. The pressure was great—a beam in the floor gave way with a loud crash; a general rush was made to the door, all indiscriminately falling one over the other, except the President, who kept his seat "silent and unmoved." The floor only sunk a little, was soon supported, and Sir Joshua recommenced his Discourse.